Guilbeau: LSU will win baseball national title

BATON ROUGE - The LSU baseball team won its 11th straight game over Arkansas in a pressure cooker, 4-2, Sunday to win its sixth Southeastern Conference Tournament starting in 2008 and earn what could be a top four seed when those come out today.

The Tigers (43-17) earned their national top eight seed before it even left Starkville, Mississippi, more than a week ago after it swept Mississippi State to win the SEC regular season.

Yes, he has not fared so well in June - 16-13 since 2010 to be exact after the 2009 national championship run, including a 1-4 mark in Omaha, Nebraska, at the College World Series.

That is not good, but it should not take away from this most recent run in Hoover, Alabama, which LSU has basically occupied since 2008 like so many Kentucky basketball teams at that SEC Tournament. Enjoy it on this Memorial Day.

And look at this LSU softball team. Down to state softball king UL Lafayette in the NCAA Regional last weekend, but Coach Beth Torina’s Gran Torinos floored it through the loser’s bracket to reach the Super Regional. There in Tallahassee, Florida, it put Florida State — undefeated at home since last year — up 1-0 after the opener on Friday.

Right where LSU wanted it. The Tigers won the next two on Saturday and Sunday and are off to the Women’s College World Series for the third straight time after two semifinal finishes.

The thing about Omaha and Oklahoma City is this. The secret is to keep going there. Sooner or later, it will work out. Remember, former LSU baseball coach Skip Bertman went four times before he won it all on his fifth trip in 1991.

Mainieri went once with the Tigers in 2008 before winning it all the next year. He went 0-2 in 2013 with Aaron Nola and Alex Bregman. He still had Bregman in 2015 with a team that won 53 games, including the SEC regular season title, and he went 1-2.

He’ll get there. In fact, you read it here first. LSU will win the 2017 national championship. It’s time. This team is that good. It always has been. I have said all year it has Omaha written all over it. It has just gotten very hot lately, and that combined with the schedule lightening up somewhat with teams like Alabama, South Carolina along with declining Auburn, Mississippi State and Kentucky.

As of now, there is no hotter team in college baseball than LSU.

And there may be no more confident team in college softball than LSU, especially when facing elimination.

The baseball team has showcased extreme offense over the last week. But that’s not gorilla ball. It’s hitting through the lineup with a few home runs but not like in 1997 and ‘98. The real reason LSU will advance to Omaha and in Omaha will be because of its starting pitching and relief pitching. That’s what wins in TD Ameritrade Park, which swallows home runs more than it gulped away all the atmosphere of Rosenblatt Stadium.

LSU will learn on Monday the other three teams for its NCAA Regional this weekend and what other NCAA Regional it will be paired with in the Super Regional. If there is not a Coastal Carolina, which eliminated LSU in two Super Regional games last year and then won it all, out there, the Tigers will advance.

Unlike in the NCAA Regional loss to Houston in 2014 and the Super Regional loss to Stony Brook in 2012, LSU has a three-headed monster in the starting rotation in Alex Lange, Jared Poche and Eric Walker, who looked like an ace in dismissing Arkansas Sunday. If they all three pitch well in the same weekend, no team has a better staff. Then there are elite relievers in Zack Hess and Hunter Newman and a few others who are improving.

Once in Omaha, if LSU’s players can just pretend it is in Hoover, it will get over the hump. Instead of saying “Omaha” just say “Hoover.” When they read “TD Ameritrade” just subliminally replace it with “Hoover Met.”

It is strange. Most of the teams that LSU has defeated in Hoover over the years as Mainieri has built an uncanny 31-6 SEC Tournament record are better than the teams they have lost to in NCAA Regional and Super Regional play at home and, frequently, in Omaha.

This is the year the Tigers solve their Omaha disappearance mysteries with their Hoover Houdini act.

It’s going to happen. And who knows? It may happen in Oklahoma City, too.